Volume 5

With some assistance from his cats, Marshall Chasin concludes that there are many over-the-ear earphones (that can be used as monitors as well) that provide a wonderfully flat and broad band response without having to aim at the eardrum.

Musicians cannot be subject to the “try this and come back in two weeks” fitting process. We need our aids to be right, from the beginning, or at least 80% there. The preprogramming formulas are not right for the demands of live music, and the audiologist often doesn’t have the sound gear to create real world level music in the clinic, which real world sound samples. Professional bass player Rick Ledbetter provides his “wish list for musicians.”

Tim Kelsall writes about the concern over young (and older) people listening to personal music players as part of their daily life and how to protect them from hearing loss. CSA Z107.56 includes a section on estimating noise exposure under headsets which puts this issue in perspective. Based on research indicating that most people set the volume of music and speech at about 15 dB above the existing ambient the standard provides an estimate of their noise exposure.

Sound Options Tinnitus Treatments conducted a blinded, randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of the personalized, spectrally altered music-based sound therapy over 12 months of use. This article will focus on the qualitative results of the trial.